Jermalle Brown and Douglas Bufford were gang members hired to combat violence on the South Side through a program hatched by Gov. Pat Quinns administration.

Paid with taxpayer funds to hand out anti-violence pamphlets, the teens were part-time foot soldiers in the governors $54.5 million Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, a program described as a comprehensive and concerted effort to keep our young people safe, off the streets and in school.

Quinn launched that program a month before his 2010 election as an answer to gun carnage in the city  even though murders that year dipped to a nearly 50-year low.

But Bufford is now dead, and Brown is charged with his murder, putting a dramatic and deadly new blemish on the one-time Quinn showpiece, which was pilloried last week in a report by Auditor General William Holland.

At the same time they were on the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative payroll, Brown, then 19, and Bufford, 16, allegedly broke into a Grand Crossing home in July 2012 with one other man and announced a robbery in what Chicago Police believe was a gang-related crime.

Its not clear, based on court and police records, what happened next. But Bufford was fatally shot in the back of the head with a shotgun, and Brown and an associate now face murder charges tied to the shooting.

Quinn encountered pushback when he launched the program, facing accusations it was merely a lavish, taxpayer-funded get-out-the-vote effort at a time in 2010 when the governor was trailing Republican Bill Brady in some election forecasts.

The program came under fire again last week when a blistering audit described it as hastily implemented and beset with pervasive deficiencies in . . . planning, implementation and management. Republicans called for a federal criminal investigation.

Of course, the national news media is focused on the New Jersey Bridge scandal, but how does Illinois Governor Pat Quinn get a pass? He doled out $54 million dollars to "Get Out the Vote" Using Criminals!

Buffords murder was brought to the Quinn administrations attention by an incredulous South Shore activist, prompting the now-defunct state agency charged with administering the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative to scurry into damage control.

First, let me begin by expressing my utter disbelief [t]hat your agency would spend money trying to make scholars out of young adults who terrorize our neighborhoods daily, South Shore resident Gina Olson wrote in an email to an official in the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority.

The South Shore community [has] some fine outstanding young adults and youth who are not criminals. Why arent these kind of people selected to represent the South Shore Chicago? Olson wrote

One ought to add that Quinn was reelected in 2010 without a majority and his plurality victory was so slim that he edged his Republican challenger by less than one percent. Quinn lost 98 of 102 counties, but ran up huge margins in the Chicago precincts where his foot soldiers were passing out pamphlets.

It was really designed to round up more votes from majority African American neighborhoods. The usual suspects were rounded up for the purpose of voting or buying votes with loose change from the Illinois taxpayers.

What do Democrats “do” with the predictable results of their insane policies, when they have been in charge for a long time?

They allign themselves with whatever element of coercive power they can find to continue their failing policies, no matter how corrupt or criminal.

OTOH, a single instance of a couple of low level employees gone rogue does not indict the entire program. If that was the case, we could certainly indict or disband all government agencies at every level, no matter the size, scope or function.

The NSA comes immediately to mind.

I don't know how many of my fellow FReepers have lived in an area controlled by criminal thugs themselves, but in my experience, there is seldom an area free of threatening criminal coersion, in every city and town at the lower economic level.

12
posted on 03/08/2014 7:40:22 PM PST
by sarasmom
(Extortion 17. A large number of Navy SEALs died on that mission. Ask why.)

It was a fake program designed to promote “Quinn” who was in a difficult campaign for reelection and help “Get Out the Vote” on election day; the monies were administered by local politicians who chose community groups to distribute the pamphlets into key precincts during the three weeks before the election at taxpayer expense.

Quinn barely won reelection despite the fact that Republicans won a majority of the Illinois Congressional Delegation in 2010. The Democrats gerrymandered that Republican majority out of existence two years later.

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